ANY QUESTIONS?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 167, 4 September 1942, Page 4

ANY QUESTIONS?

ZB Variation of *" Brains Trust"

@ Why does the Archbishop of Canterbury live in a palace? @ Why does the Church follow a hushhush policy on the subject of venereal disease? Does the Church feel that ignorance is bliss and knowledge an enticement to sin? @ Why does the Church place such emphasis in all its services and music on solemnity rather than on joy? @® Has not the Church opposed many social reforms in the past? @ Why should we teach our children the bloodthirsty war tales of the Old Testament?

@ Why isn’t the Church more outspoken against such social evils as the control of money by a minority, and the manipulating of foodstuffs for profit and to maintain prices? HESE are types of the questions which will be asked and answered in a session which it is proposed to conduct on the ZB stations in connection with the Campaign for Christian Order. The tentative title of the session is Any Questions, and it will probably be heard on Sunday evénings, beginning on September 13. The idea is borrowed

from the BBC’s Brains Trust, the most popular radio feature in Britain, enjoying a mail of 3,000 letters a week. The Brains Trust (broadcast to New Zealand at 5.30 p.m. on Sundays) consists of three "resident" members augmented by two "guest" members each week. But whereas this group of experts answers questions on any subject, the new ZB session will confine itself to questions about the problems of Christianity and its relation to everyday affairs. And that, of course, is a very wide field, since it can embrace not only religion but also politics, economics, culture, and most of the social problems of the world in which we live. Indeed, it is the hope of the sponsors that the scope of the questions will be as wide and critical and provocative as possible, since it is the aim of the Campaign for Christian Order to interest the average man and woman in the way in which the Christian message has a bearing upon

every aspect of national, international, and private life. The questions will be invited from the public and will be discussed and answered by a panel of four or five members. The Question Master will act as compére, introducing the panel, announcing the questions, and indicating who should answer first. No attempt will be made to prepare a formal answer. Any member who feels he has something useful to add to the first answer will put up his hand and on being named by the Question Master will make his contribution. It won’t be necessary for any speaker to agree with another speaker, and above all, the aim will be to keep the answers as simple, spontaneous, and direct as possible, thereby ensuring the kind of lively, straightforward, and informative discussion that has made the BBC’s Brains (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) Trust so popular. And if the questions are as provocative as the sample ones which we have quoted, and if the experts in the studio are on their toes, this promises to be one of the most interesting sessions on the air. People who have questions which they would like answered are now invited to send them to "Any Questions", National Commercial Broadcasting Service, Wellington, C.1, remembering that to be acceptable, they must have some direct bearing on the Christian message.